What is Fast Fashion?

Fast fashion is the term used to describe clothing that moves quickly from the catwalk to stores to meet new trends. The collections are often based on designs presented at designer fashion show events. Fast fashion allows mainstream consumers to purchase trendy clothing at an affordable price.

Very recently

Fast fashion has become a popular trend. Fast fashion has changed the way people dress and think about fashion. Clothes have become cheaper, and shopping has become a form of entertainment. Consumers buy a lot more clothes than ever before, and although our wardrobes are cluttered with clothes that have been worn just a few times, we are still considering buying new clothes.

Clothes shopping used to be an occasional event – something that happened a few times a year when the seasons changed, or we outgrew what we had. But that has changed within the past 5-10 years, in the dawn of the internet. When there are normally 4 seasons that fashion brands design for, fast fashion companies design for 52 seasons. That's like a collection a week..... We wanted MORE, MORE, MORE!

Despite the amount of clothing consumers buy, they don't even have the chance to wear it. The clothing that they buy comes out of style in weeks.

Smaller brands have had to change their business models and adapt to the emerging trend. Compared to the prestigious fashion brands that have just a few fashion collections in the year, fast fashion businesses offer their customers a lot more fashion collections during the year at more affordable prices. Consumers can buy more for less, but they keep up with the latest fashion trends.

Fast fashion-

A new term that is inspired by the term fast food. Fast fashion quickly-releases products with short renewal cycle and fast delivery. 4 key elements in fast fashion are (1) fast responses to consumer demand, (2) a short product life cycle, (3) a fast supply chain, and (4) lower prices.

Since the prices on these items are so low, they encourage consumers to buy in masse without thinking too much about their purchases. When we're not thinking we can't ask questions like where was our clothing made? and who made it?

This Fast Fashion epidemic has us thinking:

If there’s anything we learned from classic childhood tale, The Tortoise and The Hare, it’s that it doesn’t always pay to be fast. Taking it slow is a better strategy for almost every area of life. So, when it comes to clothing production, we should really be taking it slow. We should be thinking about using materials that don’t hurt the environment and leave minimal waste. We should be thinking about using factories that don’t abuse modern slavery.

Unfortunately, these aren’t major concerns for retailers of Fast Fashion.